Movie Classic (Mar-Aug 1936)

Personalities of the Month Charles Collins HOLLYWOOD looked at the box office reports on Becky Sharpe, first Technicolor picture, and decided to forget about color. But producers kept quietly at work. Then The Trail of the Lonesome Pine was previewed. It was a smash hit — color had triumphed ! All eyes then turned to the new all-color film, Dancing Pirate, being made by Jock Whitney. It was half completed —a great story, against the romantic background of early California, filled with, interesting characters, colorful costumes, dancing, music. But to Hollywood's astonishment, the star was completely unknown to pictures ! He is the smiling youth pictured above, tall, graceful as a panther, a New York dancer whose itching heels had carried him from an Oklahoma plow to the London stage. Charles Collins will be your next favorite ; he has leaped from screen obscurity to the spotlight of one of the year's biggest pictures. To gamble like that with an unknown is, at first thought, dangerous — but when you see him in Dancing Pirate you'll realize Whitney had a sure bet. Collins made his first hit dancing in Artists and Models. One stage success followed another, until he joined a show, Ripples, with Fred Stone and his dancing daughter, Dorothy. They went to London, and there Charles and Dorothy were married, in 1931. When discovered for films, they were dancing at the Ambassador Hotel in New York. In Hollywood they lived quietly with their famous "daddy," Fred Stone, and Paula Stone. They are Hollywood's happiest and most congenial family. Dancing Pirate is the story of a Boston dancing master who is "Shanghaied" and taken around the horn to California. The crew turn pirates and raid a California village. Charles Collins is captured and sentenced to hang, but the daughter of the village judge induces the authorities to let him live" long enough to teach her how to dance. As you may guess, the dancing lessons never end. June Lang AS June Ylasek, a blonde, she found her career at a standstill ; as June Lang, a brunette, she is skyrocketing to stardom. During the past year, she has played leading roles in Captain January, Every Saturday Night and The Country Doctor — and played them with such ability that she is now rewarded with the leading role, opposite Fredric March and Warner Baxter, in Zero Hour, a Twentieth Century-Fox "super" production. Her parents moved from Minneapolis to Los Angeles when she was a six-year old and enrolled her in the famous Meglin Dancing School — the same school, by the way, which is the alma mater of Shirley Temple. In 1930, June appeared with the Meglin Kiddies on the stage of a Los Angeles theatre and, as luck would have it, an executive of the Fox Studios was in the audience. Impressed by her beauty and ability, he lost no time in placing her under contract. During the next three years, she appeared in ingenue roles in a number of pictures. Hollywood prophesied a brilliant future for her, but, for some unknown reason, the prophesy was premature. Her career entered the doldrums which have claimed man} a promising screen personality, and for nearly a year she was virtually forgotten. It remained for Darryl Zanuck to "re-discover" her when he assumed control of Twentieth Century-Fox Studios last fall. At his suggestion, she changed her name and the color of her hair and . . . presto ! . . . behold another Hollywood miracle ! With the completion of her current assignment, which promises to be one of the most important pictures of the year, she will be safely established. Born in Minneapolis in 1915, she is of Bohemian and Swedish descent. Strangely enough, in view of her own ambition to become a great dramatic actress, none of her family has ever been connected with the theatre. 15